Hi readers!

I’ve got some great news from the one and only Dr. Typhon Garlic! With Sven and Corin’s help, Typhon’s escaped from ARC’s clutches and made it back to Earth. Hooray!

Anyway, I’ve decided that this time I’ll skip the customary chatter and let you get straight to Dr. Garlic’s journal entry:

15.08.14

Sitting in my cell, I watched the dungeon guard trudge past in his tedious patrol of the dungeon’s tunnels. He was clearly very bored, but that wasn’t going to last long.

I quickly checked the time on my space-time communicator when I was sure he wouldn’t see me. The rumbling I’d been hearing for the past hour was getting much louder, and I’d bet it was my rescuers.

Sven hadn’t mentioned how he and Corin were going to get me out, so I was left guessing.

Turned out the two had sneaked inside the facility while most of the guards were busy capturing me, and had begun to dig a tunnel leading into the dungeon.

As the guard approached my cell again for the umpteenth time, the tunnel wall suddenly exploded, knocking the poor Dractyl unconscious. Sven and Corin sure know how to make an entrance.

Corin grabbed the key to my cell from a section of the wall they hadn’t destroyed and unlocked the door.

“Thanks,” I said to him. “So do we go back through there?”

“No,” said Sven. “They’d expect that. We’re going down the hallway.”

“But won’t we run right into them?”

“No,” Corin answered, “Or, we shouldn’t. They can get here faster from the other direction, so we’ll be taking the scenic route. Here, put these on.” Corin handed me some armor and a helmet.

Sven arranged the rubble to make it look like we had gone back through the newly-made tunnel, then we ran down the hallway with all swiftness.

We came to the dungeon’s exit and stopped. “This is where we leave you,” Corin said quickly. “Don’t worry about us. We’ll be just fine.” He held up the dungeon key, grinning.

I thanked him and Sven for all their help, then Corin gave me the directions to the teleportation room. “Keep in mind,” he warned, “You’re taking the place of a troll recruit who was originally supposed to teleport to Earth at this time, so hurry.”

I walked through the large dungeon doors. The Ironthread brothers closed and locked them, and I heard Sven’s voice for the last time. “Now the real fun begins.”

Knowing that I had little time to waste, I sped towards the teleportation room, passing several ARC soldiers without being so much as glanced at. “So far so good…” I whispered to myself.

I finally reached the teleportation room. The operator motioned for me to stand on a giant illuminated pad in the center of the room.

“Pretty good stuff,” he said, noticing my armor. “Who’d you have to kill for that?” I froze. Had he realized I was not the troll recruit I was supposed to be?

He then laughed (or at least I think he was laughing–he kinda sounded like he was throwing up). I breathed a sigh of relief, realizing that he was (probably) only making a joke. “Stand still,” he ordered. I wasn’t about to argue.

A countdown then began: “Ten, nine, eight, seven,” said a computerized voice, “six, five, four,” a massive generator started up, “three, two, one. Energizing now.”

A brilliant beam struck me, and with a whoosh, I found myself back on Earth, inside a giant room that might once have been a plane hangar.

I was standing next to a four-armed female troll, behind many other troll warriors. Ten seconds later, another two-armed troll had been teleported to my other side. Within minutes I was surrounded by over two hundred other recruits from Multera.

Once the teleporter had finished its work, an important-looking troll strolled up to us, with Earth clothes on. He looked us over, then gruffly welcomed us to Earth.

“Doubtless you recruits have little or no training with these,” he shouted, lifting his gun for the whole company to see. “Your existence here will depend on your ability to adapt to modern weapons, soldiers! Swords and shields, bows and arrows–they’re not good enough anymore. You got that?”

He continued his pep talk (or whatever it was) for another fifteen minutes. During that time, I scoped out the exits. Soon we started marching, and I was still unnoticed. As we passed by a dark section of the building, I slipped away, explaining to the others that I was re-tying my boots.

Of course I just pretended until I saw no one was watching, then escaped through an unguarded exit.

Also, I think I’m going to have to have a talk with Alecia, seeing as I can’t find my adventure car in the garage I’d left it in. Then again, I did park it there a little over two years ago.

Whoo! Typhon is back! Also, I really need to figure out what is up with Dr. Garlic’s timekeeping–he definitely didn’t spend two years in Multera. Right? Right?!